I will give you an account of some of my ancestor’s movement through Europe and finally settling in the Western parts of the United States. This will be somewhat different from other Germans from Russia.
     The details of the colonization of Russia by people of German origin are well publicized. The difference between the Volhynian- Germans   and Volga- and Blacksea- Germans are these: about 1763 the Volga -Germans came mostly from western and southern parts of what is today’s Germany, traveling through Russia by way of Lübeck and St. Petersburg, down the Volga River, to settle near the city of Saratov. The Blacksea Germans mostly came from southwestern Germany, using the Danube River and settled along the Black sea near the city of Odessa in what is now the Ukraine. This was after the invasion of Russia by Napoleon. The Volhynian- Germans after 1850 came mostly from the Northern part of present- day Germany (Lower Saxony, Mecklenburg, Brandenburg) and what today are the western parts of present day Poland (Danzig, Pommerania, Silesia, West and East Prussia).
      My maternal ancestor Friedrich Bleich (My great-grandfather on my mother’s side) was born near Zhitomir. Supposedly earlier ancestors spoke Platt-deutsch (Lower-Saxon) and others spoke a southern German dialect (Elsace). The last name of my grandfather (Radtke) suggests an East German origin with a Polish influence. Some other last names of my ancestors from Russia are Sonnenberg, Kirschbaum, and Bleich, indicating a possible Jewish mix.
      Supposedly religion was never stressed in their families, although baptisms, weddings and funerals were regularly conducted. The religion of choice (possibly the only one available) was Evangelical- Lutheran. Church attendance was minimal, except for special occasions.
      Education was limited usually to two years. The boys were needed on the farms, the girls in the household. There was much work to be done, the families were large and needed a   hefty crop to sustain them for a year and have enough seeds left over for next years planting.
      My great-grandfather was born in Tomin near Wladimir-Wolinski, west of Kiev, in 1906. He moved with his family to Kourland, a Russian Province on the Baltic Sea, which later became part of Latvia. There he meet and married the daughter of my great-great grandfather (who was my great-grandmother) who also moved to Kourland from Volhynia in 1906, shortly after the revolution of 1905, which affected most regions of Russia. Some 6500 Volhynian Germans moved into the provinces of Livland, Kourland and Estland before W.W.I. Some of my ancestors had moved out of Volhynia to Canada and South America also.
     W.W.I. presented a problem: allegiance. During this war I had different ancestors fighting for the Czarist Imperial Army, the Baltic Landeswehr (against the red Army) and the U.S. Army.
      After the Independence of Latvia my ancestors again felt the need to move on because of discrimination against the German minority in Latvia. Some emigrated to Canada, Oregon, Brazil and Argentina. My great-grandfather stayed in Latvia until W.W.II when by agreement between Stalin and Hitler, about 70,000 Germans from Latvia were resettled in parts of western Poland, which had been acquired by Germany in the Blitzkrieg against Poland. Ironically this probably was the area from which my ancestors had moved from 90 years earlier to settle in Russia.
     In the year 1939 the agreement between Germany and Russia to bring all people with German ancestry “Heim ins Reich” affected most Germans who possessed German “Volksangehörig keit” and were living in parts of Europe that were to come under Soviet influence (or annexation). This included the Baltic States, Polish Volhynia and Bessarbia, among others. Not affected were the Volga Germans, the Black Sea Germans, the Germans living in Russian Volhynia, nor the Germans who were living (or existing) in other parts of the Soviet Union.
     Near the end of W.W.II most of the Volhynian Germans who had been resettled in western Poland were forced to flee from the onrushing Russian Army. My ancestors were among them. They found refuge in what later became West Germany.
     After the war ended, it became difficult to stay in a devastated Germany. Some of my distant relatives moved back to Russia settling in Latvia. Some stayed in the German Democratic Republic. Some stayed in Germany. My great-grandfather and his wife decided to join his brothers and sisters in Oregon, were his oldest brother and sister had moved to before W.W.I and others had fallowed after W.W.I and W.W.II.
     There are now relatives numbering several hundred living in the Oregon City area, and more scattered throughout Oregon. Some have also recently moved to other west coast states and the western provinces of Canada. For some unexplained reason there are no known ancestors living east of the Rockies in the United States.
      There are, however, many of my Germans from Russia relatives still living in Germany, Sweden, Latvia and France. I had the opportunity to travel to Germany in the summer of 2004 and meet some of them that were living near Hamburg (Lüneburg) .I stayed with a cousin for several weeks and she will be visiting me here in Oregon this summer.
      It is amazing that after so many years and such enormous distances we are able to keep in touch with our relatives and reestablish a bond through our common ancestors, the Germans who settled in Russia 150 years ago, and their children, who by choice or compulsion moved to many parts of the world, to find freedom.